Q & A with Fatal Farm

Interviewed by Less Lee Moore

If you frequently troll YouTube for weird videos or subscribe to WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, you may have already heard of Lasagna Cat, video mashups of well-known songs with three-panel Garfield comics.

If you haven’t, then you should probably watch one immediately.

Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max, a.k.a. Fatal Farm, accept all responsibility and/or blame for Lasagna Cat. . . along with parodies of ’80s TV Themes and Infinite Solutions, a series of science-y “educational” shorts. All are nothing short of brilliant: a bizarre mix of mundane, surreal, and disturbing that will either render you utterly confused or drooling with laughter (and I’m not ashamed to say, I’m in the latter camp).

The blogosphere has a way of creating overnight phenomena and such is the case with Zach and Jeffrey’s videos. Although they’ve got a lot on their plates (a lot of lasagna that is), they were kind enough to take the time to answer the following questions via email.

Lasagna Cat: 3/24/1979

Popshifter: Who are the primary filmmakers, comedians, and bands that you consider yourselves fans of? Did any of them inspire your sense of surreal humor?

Fatal Farm: We consume a lot of media. We’ve recently been introduced to a lot of British stuff. Sketch shows and faux-reality shows by Peter Serafinowicz and Chris Morris are really interesting. American-TV-wise, Tim and Eric [Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job] and the P.F.F.R. guys [P.F.F.R. are responsible for Wonder Showzen among other things.—Ed.] are producing good things. More than anything though, we find ourselves watching Japanese game shows and regional restaurant commercials on YouTube. I assume Adult Swim and the Japanese people share equal importance in inspiring us.

Popshifter: It’s obvious that you love pranks, especially trying to take them as far as possible. Are there any pranks your fans may not be aware of which you would be willing to admit to?

Fatal Farm: Three or four episodes into our “Infinite Solutions” series, we started creating mini-episodes called “Quick Tips” and hiding them on the Internet. The URLs to access them are hidden on secondary sites or buried within our main videos. They’re all up on YouTube, having been found and posted long ago by fans. But we’re surprised at the number of people who don’t know about the hunt. Beyond those, everything else we’ve made is readily accessible.

Lasagna Cat: 8/18/1978

Popshifter: “Infinite Solutions” is a great parody of “science” shows and late night infomercials. It has the same sort of dry, absurd humor that Mystery Science Theater 3000 sketches did. Were you a fan of that show?

Fatal Farm: We certainly were, but any connection to MST3K is subconscious. The main inspiration for “Infinite Solutions” was “The Video Professor”—the mustachioed bald guy that teaches you how to use computers. Our later episodes strayed from tech/gadgetry because we thought it best to broaden our target after the tech community so aggressively debunked us.

Popshifter:What are your favorite infomercials or commercials for bizarre and/or useless products? The Magic Bullet? The September 11 commemorative coin? Genisphere anti-aging cream with “Q-somes”?

Fatal Farm: Those are all good ones. We recently came across a fantastic series of commercials for “Appliance Direct.” And while the guy isn’t selling useless products (he sells household appliances) he more than makes up for it with his charm and charisma.

Lasagna Cat: 5/14/1979

Popshifter: Would you ever tackle the unsung genius of Family Circus in upcoming film and video projects?

Fatal Farm: We’ve gotten a lot of requests to rip into a number of comics, and as tempting as it is, we’re probably going to move on. We already feel we’ve encroached on Joe Mathlete’s territory with our Garfield project. His Marmaduke Explained blog should be all the comic strip lampooning the world needs.

Popshifter: Did Lasagna Cat evolve out of a desire to make Garfield actually funny? Has anyone involved with Jim Davis contacted you about fair use or “defamation of character”?

Fatal Farm: Originally, we’d planned to just reenact the strips. Eliciting confusion and sporadic laughter was our goal. After we started assembling them, we realized that live action Garfield wasn’t much funnier than the comic strip and was probably more tedious because it took longer to watch than read. At some point we tried adding a music video to energize a strip, and the Lasagna Cat project totally changed. We haven’t heard anything from Jim Davis or his people. Yet.

Lasagna Cat
behind the scenes.

Popshifter: Do you think it’s appropriate for me to determine if I want to be friends with someone based on their reaction to Lasagna Cat or your TV Theme videos?

Fatal Farm: Who are we to judge? We’ve got our own friend-screening measures so we’d be hypocrites if we said you shouldn’t. Zach is currently using peoples’ reception of the new Rambo movie as a litmus test. And Jeffrey will be your friend if you give him some gummi bears.

Popshifter: Tell us about some of your upcoming projects. When should we look for these?

Fatal Farm: We’re going to get back to “Infinite Solutions” because we’ve let that series lapse. We’re regretful about that since fans of the series have been so helpful and supportive. After that, we’re planning a series of short films that we’ll launch online. We’re still working out exactly what the hook is with those, but here are some of the elements at play right now: spinning, mayonnaise, horses, a crossbow, and anti-gravity. We hope to have these done by summer, but sometimes special effects work slows us down.